


You know, I won't miss you when you're gone

by leftofrevolution



Category: Sonic the Hedgehog (2020)
Genre: M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-09
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-01 02:15:38
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,489
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23077660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leftofrevolution/pseuds/leftofrevolution
Summary: It had been one hundred and nineteen days since the disappearance of Doctor Ivo Robotnik. According to official record, he never existed. According toanyrecord, he was never found.
Relationships: Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik & Agent Stone, Dr. Eggman | Dr. Robotnik/Agent Stone
Comments: 72
Kudos: 321





	You know, I won't miss you when you're gone

It had been one hundred and nineteen days since the disappearance of Doctor Ivo Robotnik. Not that anyone would admit to this if asked--the doctor had been a state secret even before the incident with the blue blur, which had made it disconcertingly easy for the United States government to erase the fact he had ever lived to begin with. What records of him existed were redacted and then purged, his research all ascribed to other government scientists who couldn’t even _understand_ the doctor’s work but were all too happy to claim it as their own. The doctor’s labs and equipment were treated similarly, torn apart and all hint of their origins scrubbed before their remains were circulated among more tractable researchers like the vultures they were, unable to stand in the light of greatness but more than willing to feast on its corpse.

Doctor Robotnik’s mobile lab--which the doctor had always called just ‘my lab’ or perhaps ‘the lair’ when he hadn’t slept in several days--was a harder one for the government to crack, built as it was to be impenetrable by standard armaments, chock full of completely _non_ -standard defensive measures, and the doors locked with such an advanced encryption algorithm that the team they had brought in to hack it took one look at the code and immediately started making plans to co-write a paper to explain how the algorithm even worked. When Commander Walters had floated the idea with the team of actually getting any of the doors _open_ , they had just glanced at each other and started to laugh.

Stone, for his part, had just stared at his superiors blankly when they asked him about getting in. “The doctor didn’t trust anyone,” he had pointed out. The past tense came out of his mouth smoothly, like honey instead of the bile it was. “Do you really think he would tell me how to get into his _private lab_?”

They had him try anyway, despite the fact that the last person who had kept at the door after the automatic five-second warning had left the site in a body bag. Stone hadn’t protested too much--or at all, really--just nodded tightly and swallowed, saluting Commander Walters before walking stiffly up to the door, the very sight of a man about to die for his country.

He had tried the door, pressing his hand against the panel that doubled as a fingerprint reader. And then he had ignored the automatic five-second warning.

He had woken up six hours later, being informed upon regaining consciousness by the nurse that it would take another day before the tranquilizers completely wore off.

“Well,” Commander Walters had said, clapping him on the back with a too-hearty smile, “At least we know the lunatic liked you.”

Stone had smiled back, his smile not at all tight around the edges.

They gave up a month later, after three more deaths and Stone once more being shot full of tranquilizers, this time the automatic five-second warning being followed not only by a tranq shot to the neck but also by a recording of the doctor’s own voice, shaking with all-too-recognizable irritation as he shouted, “For the love of god, Stone, _fuck off_ or next time I’m lasering your _fucking legs_.”

It had been the first time Stone had heard the doctor’s voice in over three months. (They had erased all of the recordings. No chance of attributing _those_ to someone else.)

They had not made Stone try again after that. They had not made anyone try after that, the site emptying out in preparation for “bombing to hell this waste of time,” as one grumbling major had put it.

Stone had been allowed to stay behind at the nearby military clinic in deference to the fact he wouldn’t be able to walk straight for another eighteen hours despite the bombing being planned for first thing in the morning. He had saluted Commander Walters again from his bed, only mildly shaky, and the commander had laid a hand on his shoulder. “You are a brave man, Stone.”

“Thank you sir,” said Stone, allowing some strain to enter his voice, knowing how choking on an emotion always sounded much the same whether it was revulsion or gratitude.

The nurse on duty couldn’t reasonably have been expected to hear the sound of one of Stone’s back molars cracking about ten minutes after Walters left, nor notice half an hour later that there was something slightly off about the taste of her coffee. Stone left her sitting slumped in her chair, knowing from his previous stay with the clinic and a quick review of its protocols and patient list that she had just finished her rounds, that since it was past midnight she would not be making them again for two hours, and that the sedative he had given her would wear off shortly before that and leave her muddled and thinking she had merely fallen asleep sitting up. That gave him slightly less than a two-hour window.

The clinic was four miles from the site.

He was back in his bed in one hour and forty-three minutes, eyes closed against the dim light slipping in under the door.

He was awoken four hours later by the entire clinic shaking, and he knew in that moment that the doctor’s private lab was gone.

But not his research. Not _those_ recordings. And not thirty-two percent of the doctor’s badniks, which were all of those the doctor had either encoded with both high-grade stealth and go-to-ground protocols or Stone could fit in two military-grade duffle bags alongside the doctor’s emergency lab kit.

\--*--

Walters had wanted to reassign him immediately; Stone had begged off, as gracefully as he could. “I appreciate the opportunity, sir, but I haven’t had a vacation in nearly seven years; think I’d like to have a nice, long one before going back to being a glorified babysitter.”

Walters had taken it almost as gracefully, had laughed and clapped him on the shoulder again. Stone was beginning to think Walters actually _liked_ him. “Ah, that’s right, that maniac never did allow you to take time off, did he, Agent Stone? You’re due for, what, about three months of leave?”

“Five, sir,” said Stone, smiling. “Haven’t been camping in a while; considering going to be a hermit in the woods, see how that feels.”

“Aw, don’t do that Stone,” said Walters, all affability. “You’re the only one of our protective agents most of our resident eggheads won’t bitch about having assigned to them; we’d hate to lose you.”

_Not so much you weren’t willing to watch the doctor’s lab kill me_ , Stone thought, and continued smiling instead of spitting in Walters’ face.

\--*--

He got his leave. He spent the first week of it pouring over the doctor’s recordings trying to figure out exactly what had happened.

This didn’t actually take a full week; the doctor automatically uploaded all footage he took to the secure servers in his private lab, which meant Stone got a first-person view of the doctor’s mad chase of the blue blur--who was an anthropomorphic blue hedgehog named Sonic, apparently--right up until the point the doctor’s ship was thrown through that last ring portal. To a different planet.

It was only until Stone felt something wet trickle down his chin that he realized he had bitten entirely through his lower lip. Another planet. Another _planet_. An _alien_ with _teleportation_ technology had come to Earth, blown out the power of a third of the country, and the United States government had _ordered_ the doctor, the most brilliant mind it ever had or ever would have occasion to field, to deal with the threat, and when for the first time in his decades of service, the doctor had _failed_ …

It had abandoned him. _They_ had abandoned him. Worse than that, they had _erased_ him. And Stone couldn’t even delude himself that Commander Walters and his ilk hadn’t known what really happened; even without access to the doctor’s footage, there had been too many witnesses. They would have asked. And they would have known.

The doctor hadn’t betrayed them. He had, in fact, been doing exactly as asked. As ordered. As he had always done.

And as always, that hadn’t been enough to stop them from being scared of him. From _celebrating_ that he was gone, letting the little alien go as if he had performed some service for them, as if he weren’t the very enemy they had sent the doctor to stop.

So no, it didn’t actually take a full week. It took little more than three days, most of which Stone spent trying to get the best footage of that last portal, to see where the doctor had gone. Whether he might be still alive.

What Stone saw was mushrooms. Large ones. A lot of light. So capable of supporting life, but _human_ life? Stone didn’t know. He could only hope, and there wasn’t a lot of it to spare.

Walters and his cronies could only hope it was _enough_ , since Stone spent the rest of that week activating the protocols in the few remaining hunter-class badniks to track down and murder absolutely everyone above the rank of major involved in the cover up. The hard part was actually programming in the twelve month delay, the contingency incapable of being overridden except by the order of the doctor himself.

That’s how long Stone was willing to give them. Twelve months. Twelve months to have their mistake _rectified_ , such that their choices hadn’t led to the death of the greatest genius ever to walk the Earth. Stone could only smirk bitterly under the glowing blue light of the code; it was funny, really. The only way they had any chance at all was if Doctor Robotnik was exactly as terrifying as they feared.

\--*--

Stone actually hadn’t been lying about the camping. He was not in reality a massive fan of the pastime--two years as an army grunt and five years of spec ops in the most hostile parts of the world had largely cured him of any ability to see the wondrous parts of nature--but it gave him a good excuse to get the hell away from people.

Stone actually liked people, most of the time, or at least the trappings of civilization. Hot showers. Beds. Lattes. Nice suits. He had even enjoyed to some extent the banality of it, the greetings in the hallway to coworkers, giving tips on how to best operate the espresso machine. Calming ritual filling in the gaps between either gunfire or explosions.

Except after over three months of playing nice with the brass who had decided to use and discard the doctor like he were so much used tissue paper, if Stone had to smile at one more person he would probably start screaming. So he bought enough supplies to survive in the harshest wilderness for six months and absconded to the most remote parts of the Appalachian Mountains he could find.

At least that is what he told people. And what all drones sent by the United States government to stalk him would report. (As if the doctor hadn’t programmed most of them to begin with.) In truth, Stone went to Montana, though still with the camping supplies (which included several weeks of food, a portable water collection and filtration system, two fitted respirators, and five separate changes of clothes, only two of which were in Stone’s size). Along with the doctor’s emergency lab kit. And a hospital-grade medical kit. And three separate solar-powered chargers with universal adapters. And his computer, a gift from the doctor that looked exactly like a mid-grade Rolex (and was also, of course, solar powered). And four of the doctor’s smallest scouting drones. Which he immediately sent to spy on one Tom Wachowski.

Because while Stone was certainly a fool and moron compared to the doctor, he wasn’t actually either of those things in an absolute sense. After all, he had watched the doctor’s footage of the chase from beginning to end multiple times, and there had been numerous proclamations of friendship between the alien and the small-town cop just in those fifteen minutes, not to mention the cave hideout they had located outside Green Hills where the alien appeared to have been living. Green Hills was Sonic’s home, and if the alien was going to communicate with _anyone_ , it would be Tom Wachowski.

And by ‘communicate with’, Stone found out within twenty-four hours, he apparently meant ‘live with’. As in Sonic appeared to live in Wachowski’s house. Specifically his attic, which contained a very convenient, opening skylight.

Here was the thing: Stone didn’t actually care about Sonic. Dangerous the alien might have been, but it seemed mostly inadvertent on his part, and his actions, while personally causing Stone no end of grief, largely seemed to have been taken in self defense. What fury Stone felt in his heart over the whole fiasco was reserved for the United States government, not for a tiny alien who had just been trying to protect himself.

No, what Stone cared about was not Sonic himself, but what the alien possessed. The teleportation rings, the very technology through which Doctor Robotnik had been thrown to a different _world_. And the very technology that was the only way Stone knew of to get him back.

\--*--

As it turned out, Sonic kept the bag of rings under his bed. His bed shaped like a race car. Because he was apparently actually a child. Which was depressing for its own reasons, but for the moment Stone would take the alien’s naivete as a blessing.

Unfortunately the scout drones weren’t strong or dexterous enough to retrieve the rings on their own. Which left several different options, but the one Stone ended up deciding upon was just… handling it himself. It was easy enough to decide on a time--based on the past few weeks of monitoring, the Wachowskis and Sonic went out for chili dogs every Saturday for lunch--so after that it was just a matter of doing it.

It was only after Stone made his way out of his motel--a run down little place the next town over from Green Hills, as he hadn’t actually wanted to have to use his camping gear until he absolutely had to--and called a taxi from the gas station payphone that he noticed there was an Optical Illusions across the street. And that the doctor’s favorite brand of sunglasses was featured in the window.

Well. The mushroom planet _had_ looked very sunny, in retrospect. The sun hats he had packed might very well not be enough.

By the time the taxi arrived ten minutes later, Stone had two pairs of sunglasses secreted away in their cases in his camping bags. He spent the half hour drive to Green Hills looking out the window, wishing his last view of planet Earth wasn’t of fucking Montana.

\--*--

Stone had the taxi driver drop him off outside Green Hills itself and walked the rest of the way, hiking off road through the woods. The scout drones told him the minute the Wachowski household left to make their weekly chili dog run, so it was five minutes after that Stone finished crawling up the back of the house and dropped in quietly through the skylight, closing it behind him as he went.

Reaching under the bed and pulling out the small bag full of rings should not have been as tense a moment as it was. They looked like simple gold wedding rings, nothing special, but Sonic could return at literally any moment, lunch plans or no, so Stone couldn’t help twitching at the faintest sound, even when it was just the air conditioning unit clicking on. When Stone reached into the bag and pulled one of the rings out, it was difficult not to hold his breath. He _knew_ they were voice activated, that it was just alien tech, but he was also very, very aware he was toying with something that he did not in the slightest understand.

But there was no going back now.

Stone reached into the bag again, pulling out two more rings, and dropped them into an inner pocket of his jacket before zipping it shut, then carefully closed the bag and slipped it back under the bed right as Sonic had left it. He had briefly considered taking all of the rings, but while Sonic seemed careless enough he might not notice three rings missing out of twenty, he would _certainly_ notice if all of them up and disappeared. Forget Sonic coming after them (because if the alien had any sense at all he would have stored at least a few of the rings elsewhere), _anyone_ on Earth even suspecting what Stone was doing would make it much, _much_ harder to come back.

They had no allies on Earth, after all. Which meant there was no one on Earth that Stone wanted to see them coming.

Which meant he had to leave now. So Stone took a deep breath, repeated Sonic’s words from the recording, and tossed the ring. And stepped through.

\--*--

He did not immediately die. So there was that.

It was ridiculously bright though, no clouds at all and the sun hanging ominously close in the sky, so Stone pulled out his new pair of sunglasses and put them on before scanning the horizon.

There were a lot of mushrooms. They were large. That was basically it.

Stone sighed and turned to look at the four scout drones, which were the only badniks he had been sure he would have time to bring through the portal with him in the three seconds it stayed open. “Engage scouting pattern Alpha Delta Blue, target Doctor Robotnik, six hours.”

The drones blinked at him once in acknowledgement before buzzing off in four separate directions, leaving Stone standing alone on top of a giant mushroom.

It had been, by that point, one hundred and eleven days since the disappearance of Doctor Robotnik.

That was a long time to be stranded on an alien planet alone. _Completely_ alone, apparently, no sign of the smallest animal life at all. Which was one of the reasons Stone felt comfortable dropping his bags (with great relief; between the deluxe-size camping backpack and the two duffle bags slung over his shoulders, he was carrying roughly his body weight in gear) and pulling out his flare gun before pointing it at the sky and shooting it.

It was, altogether, foolish; he had only brought six shots, and it was still day. Presuming the planet rotated enough for this side of the planet to _have_ a night, it would have been smarter to wait to shoot the flare until night where it would have been more visible. But the thought of waiting for even a second to let the doctor know that help had come--that he was no longer _alone--_ was completely unbearable.

Besides, the only one who would ever chastise him about it was the doctor, and considering the circumstances Stone would happily take whatever the doctor wanted to throw at him. It would mean he was alive. It would mean he was _safe_ , with Stone. So Stone sat down on the mushroom, and settled in to wait.

\--*--

The scout drones came back with nothing. The first time, the second time, the third. The fourth. The fifth. Even when Stone redirected them to search for the remains of the doctor’s ship they didn’t find so much as a piece of castoff metal. Stone couldn’t even properly monitor them while they were gone--while his wrist computer was technically linked to the drones, the mushroom planet lacked the satellites for long-distance communication, meaning the drones couldn’t actually communicate with him past about six point eight miles, where even with a little bit of elevation their pings were blocked by the curvature of the planet. Even when the sun set thirty hours in--even when Stone finally gave into his agitation and set off another flare--there was nothing. No response signal. No footprints found by the drones. No signs of life at all, besides the mushrooms.

It was at the beginning of day three (by his own count, not by the planet’s) that Stone decided to stop sitting there moping and actually use his brain. He pulled out the footage of what had been visible through the portal the doctor had been sent through and compared it to what he was seeing before him, and as he had thought (had hoped), the views were identical. So _why couldn’t he find anything?_

_Because the doctor was in a flying ship, you moron_ , said a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like the doctor himself. _And it was knocked through. If it ever landed, it would likely have been some distance from here_. And if it had not been a controlled landing--if the force of the knock backwards meant it had been a crash--it would be straight back from the portal. So straight ahead of where he was standing now.

The next time the drones came back, Stone changed their scouting pattern such that they went on slightly divergent paths straight out from the portal exit, never leaving range of communication with each other. Then he sat down again, and waited.

\--*--

The doctor’s ship had crashed forty-three miles from the portal exit, eighteen miles from sight of the flare and thirteen from the widest radius of the drones’ earlier scouting pattern. It took Stone two days to walk there from the moment the drones alerted him, regretting with each step how much gear he had brought with him but never for a moment enough so to the point that he was willing to leave anything behind.

The drones still reported to him every six hours during his trek, each time with new updates. There had been blood in the cockpit (what remained of it, which was hardly anything), but not very much. No body. Signs of movement outside. Someone walking away from the wreckage, _away_ from the portal exit. But not very fast.

So the doctor was alive. It was only when Stone was standing in front of the wreckage himself that he allowed himself to recognize that fact as _fact_ , instead of just a fantasy. Alive, or at least he had been, four months ago.

Stone took a deep breath, then let it go. (If it came out a little ragged, there was no around to hear it but himself.) Then he dropped all but the medical kit and the most basic camping supplies on the mushroom, wrapping it all in a tarp and using a hook through the tarp’s eyelets to hang it from the mushroom’s underside, and set off. He was fine. Everything was fine. He had a path now. The doctor may have had a massive head start on him, but Stone had been trained in tracking, and he could coordinate with the drones. Whether it took ten days or one hundred, he _would_ find the doctor.

\--*--

His determination lasted three days. It would have lasted longer, except then Stone very nearly missed someone throwing a rock on him.

In his defense, he had been distracted--the doctor appeared to have been doubling back a _lot_ , retracing his steps, and the drones were having some trouble figuring out which traces were the most recent, so Stone had been kneeling trying to make his own sense of the tracks when he heard a voice yell, “Reconnaissance!” and a rock twice as large as Stone’s head almost brained him.

Stone ducked just in time, but the rock still glanced off of Stone’s shoulder before it rolled to a stop. Stone could only stare at it mutely for a few seconds, wincing as he clutched at his shoulder before looking upward at the mushroom above him. At the person peering down. At the doctor.

Stone actually had to blink a few seconds. No way. No way it was that simple. He had been on this godforsaken mushroom planet only _eight days_. Surely he had to look more? Surely it couldn’t be this easy?

Except of course it wasn’t, as the doctor took one look at him, squinting down--and he looked- he didn’t _look_ right, even ignoring the shaved head and the moustache his skin was too pale--then snorted, as if unimpressed. “You’ll have to do better than that!”

“Uh,” said Stone, sounding exactly as stupid as the doctor thought him. “I- I am- I am _so sorry_ , doctor.” To his own disgust, he was _actually tearing up_ , and had to wipe at his eyes before he continued. “I know it’s been-”

“Stone doesn’t even dress like that!” said the doctor, either not noticing or caring that he had cut Stone off.

What? “Doctor?” Stone said, hating how uncertain his own voice sounded.

Doctor Robotnik didn’t even seem to hear him. “Seriously, _leggings_? _Hiking boots_? Stone doesn’t even _own_ leggings!”

The words themselves were disconcerting enough on their own, but it took Stone a while to realize what was really bothering him. It was difficult to tell through the goggles, but beyond the initial glance, Doctor Robotnik wasn’t even _looking_ at him, instead seemed to be addressing the air.

_Oh_ , Stone thought with a heavy, sinking feeling. _He thinks he’s hallucinating_. This thought continued to sink for a few seconds longer before he had a second one. _Wait. Why would he be hallucinating me?_

This second thought didn’t have time to go anywhere before the doctor jumped down from his own mushroom and landed on Stone’s, so close Stone actually had to push himself back a step so the doctor wouldn’t land on him. _“_ And a _sun hat_? Come on!” He crouched in front of Stone, leaning forward so his face was only inches from the tip of Stone’s nose. “I mean, points for the glasses, but really _-_ ”

“I’m sorry doctor,” Stone repeated, though this time for a different reason, as he reached out and grabbed the doctor by the wrist.

The doctor’s instructions had always been very explicit on touching: Namely, _don’t_. Ever. No, there are no such things as extenuating circumstances.

This last part had on more than one occasion turned out to be a lie--the doctor at least seemed to have little trouble touching _him_ , even if the merest brush of someone else against him sent him into such convulsions of disgust that he immediately needed to take a shower--but Stone certainly never _initiated_ anything.

Probably for good reason, as at the first touch of Stone’s fingers on his wrist, the doctor flinched back so hard he nearly fell off the mushroom. “No!”

“I’m sorry,” Stone said again, aware of just how much he was sounding like a broken record. “I just-”

“Not listening!” said the doctor, far too shrilly, scrambling to his feet before he covered his ears with his hands. “You are not _real_ , and as I am _one hundred percent sane_ , I refuse to listen to a hallucination!”

And then he started to walk away.

So Stone tackled him. Off the mushroom.

\--*--

He hadn’t _meant_ to tackle the doctor off the mushroom, but the doctor’s balance was dicier than he expected, so off they went. Not very far--the spongy undergrowth layer was only about ten feet down--but the doctor as the party on the bottom still took the full brunt of Stone’s weight as they landed, so he was wheezing even as Stone grimly tossed away the lingering remnants of guilt and pinned the doctor to the ground by his wrists.

“I _am_ real,” said Stone, taking the chance to explain himself during the few seconds the doctor was too out of breath to interrupt him. “I stole some of the teleportation rings from the alien and I followed you here, to _find_ you. I bought these clothes at REI, and they’re _ugly_ and I _hate_ them but they had the best reviews, and you are-” And then, for the first time in full daylight, Stone got a good look at the doctor. “You’re sick.”

It had been hard to see, in the shadow of the taller mushroom, but even if hadn’t been obvious from- well, the _obvious_ , the doctor _really_ didn’t seem well. The doctor wasn’t merely pale, he was _white_ , and he was shaking underneath Stone’s hands. And his skin- Stone didn’t care how warm out it was, the doctor felt far too _hot_.

And he was _thin_. Not that the doctor hadn’t always been slightly too skinny, but Stone could feel every bone in the doctor’s wrists.

Stone wasn’t quite sure why any of this surprised him--the doctor had been marooned on an alien planet for nearly four months, honestly ill and malnourished was nearly the best-case scenario--but the doctor was _the doctor_. Unstoppable.

Well, that was still true (for all that for the moment, Stone had managed to stop him). But that didn’t mean he couldn’t be slowed down. Or hurt.

It was while Stone was thinking all of this that the doctor wrenched one of his wrists free and punched Stone in the face.

\--*--

The blow did not hurt very much--the doctor lacked the leverage for a decent punch, and Stone knew how to take one besides--so Stone just winced and grabbed the doctor by the wrist again, forcing him back down. “I really am sorry-”

“Stone?”

The doctor had said Stone’s name before. Obviously. It was, at least in Stone’s hearing, one of his most repeated words, right behind ‘the’, ‘robots’, and several variations of ‘idiot’.

But Stone had never quite heard him say it in that way before. He had never heard the doctor say _anything_ in quite that way before. Like- like if the doctor were anyone else, the voice someone would use if they had woken up from a good dream but didn’t yet want to acknowledge they was awake. As if speaking too loudly would cause the memory of the dream to spill out from between their fingers.

Stone _never_ wanted to hear that voice from the doctor. Not ever.

Because it meant his current lived reality was something too terrible to wake up to. And Stone had _left_ him to it. For _four months_.

So now he was tearing up _again_. Which was great and totally helpful. “I’m here,” he could only say, tightening his grip even further on the doctor’s wrists, as if that slight extra bit of pressure could prove his existence. “I’m _real_ , I _promise_ , I have a medical kit up on the mushroom and some canned soup and I downloaded your Spotify playlists, they’re all on my wrist-”

The doctor tugged again with his right arm, and this time Stone let him go. He _deserved_ a punch, really. He deserved worse than that. He could have stolen the doctor’s recordings from the lab two weeks in and been here three months ago if he hadn’t worried so much about getting caught, about leaving no trace, hadn’t tried to be _clever_. And now the doctor was-

The doctor was touching his face. In a not-punching way. It felt… odd, and not just because of the fever the doctor was running. And the doctor was squinting at him--the goggles had been knocked slightly askew, not off his face entirely but halfway up his forehead, away from his eyes--and his pupils weren’t dilating right but more than that, the doctor was _staring_ at him. Like he was waiting for something.

So Stone tried again. “I’m sorry-”

“Shut up, Stone,” said the doctor, not removing his hand from Stone’s face. So Stone did. After a moment, the doctor’s nose wrinkled. “Wait, never mind, I don’t like that. Keep talking.”

Stone opened his mouth before closing it, then trying, a little tentatively, “I brought supplies to make lattes, but they’re all back at your ship.”

“Now _that_ just sounds fake,” said the doctor, then started to laugh. And it _was_ a mad sound, just as crazy and unsettling as the top brass had always claimed he was, but Stone didn’t let go, and he didn’t flinch away. And if the laughter quickly turned to sobs--if the doctor didn’t resist at all, not even a little, as Stone pulled him up so the doctor could bury his face in Stone’s shoulder--well. There was no one else to see. A world spanning thousands of miles, and just as it had been on Earth, it was just the two of them alone.

\--*--

It had been one hundred and nineteen days since the disappearance of Doctor Ivo Robotnik. According to official record, he never existed. According to _any_ record, he was never found.

**Author's Note:**

> Did I see the Sonic movie yesterday? Yes. Did I write all of this in a day? Also yes.


End file.
